Tussle with a style-sheet fundamentalist (From The Oxford Times)

Tussle with a style-sheet fundamentalist

10:47am Wednesday 1st September 2010 in

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I am sorry to have left readers (including, rather dangerously, our senior editor) in the air last week on the story I started to tell about my clash with an American novelist on a question of grammar. The tale is best told through our exchange of emails. So here goes: She: Dear Mr. Gray: “The production reunites her with director Olivia Fuchs, designer Yannis Thavoris and lighting designer Colin Grenfell. Between them, they conjure a magical world, monochrome in the main, at which we cannot do other than gaze in rapt fascination.” [from my review of Opera Holland Park’s Pelléas et Mélisande]. Surely you meant to say ‘Among them’, Mr, Gray?

Me:I detect no error in what I have written. Perhaps you would care to explain.

She: I’m sorry that you are not familiar with the distinction in usage between the prepositions ‘between’ and ‘among’ — you are not alone these days in this, as English grammar has been shamefully neglected in schools for several decades now.

Me: Thank you for your continued efforts to point out the alleged error of my ways in respect of ‘between’. I am afraid that I still cannot accept that you are right. I put the matter to an acquaintance of mine, a very long-serving member of the Oxford University English Faculty, who comments: “‘Between them...’, in describing a collaboration, seems to me perfectly correct — ‘Among them...’ wouldn’t be, and would indeed read very oddly!

“I wonder where this person is ‘coming from’, metaphorically or otherwise... I suppose she may think that ‘between...’ can only allude to two persons, but I’m sure that’s not the case — as exemplified in the cliché ‘between you and me and the gate-post’.”

Despite our disagreement, it is good to hear from someone who takes matters of grammar seriously, as I do.

After that came a silence, which was not broken by me. Such was my tussle with a style-sheet fundamentalist.